Diaries of Court Ladies
letter. After excusing himself for his late neglect he wrote:
I have an awkward thing to ask you. There is a lady with whom I have been secretly intimate. She is going away to a distant province and I want to send her a poem which will touch her heart deeply. Everything you write touches me, so please compose a poem for me.
She was unwilling conceitedly to carry out his wishes, but she thought it too prudish to refuse him, so she wrote with the words: "How can I satisfy you?"
Her poem:
In the tears of regret
Your image will linger long
Even after chilly Autumn has gone by.
It is painful for me to write a heartfelt letter in your place.
And on the margin she wrote:
Leaving you, where can she go?
For me no other life.
The Prince wrote back:
Very good poem is all that I can say. I cannot say that you have expressed my heart. Forsaking me she wanders away.
So let it be.
Let me think of you, the unexcelled one.
There is not another.
Thus I can live on.
It was the Tenth month and more than ten days had passed before the Prince came to her.
"The inner room is too dark and makes me restless. Let me sit here near the veranda." He said many
